The Space
Painkiller opened on Essex Street on the Lower East Side in May 2010, marked by a turquoise spray-painted door that became its calling card. Giuseppe Gonzalez and Richard Boccato built it as a serious tiki bar at a moment when craft tiki had nearly vanished from New York.
The bar treated tiki as a cocktail discipline rather than a kitsch joke. That stance mattered. Painkiller is widely credited, alongside a small handful of rooms, with restarting the city's modern tiki conversation, and it drew steady attention from the cocktail press during its short run.
A turquoise door on Essex Street that helped restart New York's craft tiki movement.
The room merged tiki's romanticised South Seas imagery with the owners' nostalgia for the grit of 1970s Lower East Side. It read as deliberately rough rather than polished, a tiki bar that knew exactly where it stood in the city.
Foursquare tips and The Tiki Chick's write-up describe a dim, packed space where the drinks did the talking. Capacity was tight, and it filled fast on weekends.
The drinks were the reason to go. Tiki cocktails arrived in proper tiki mugs, and the pina colada came served in a frozen pineapple, a presentation that regulars still bring up. The rum focus was real, and the builds were precise.
The namesake Painkiller is what eventually forced the rename. After a trademark dispute with Pusser's Rum, which owns the Painkiller name, the bar became PKNY. It closed in 2013, not long after.
The crowd skewed cocktail-literate, a mix of industry regulars and Lower East Side night-crawlers who came for the rum program. It ran late and loud.
Tiki fans treated it as a pilgrimage stop while it lasted. The 2021 PKNY reunion in Greenpoint, run with original owner Richard Boccato, showed how much goodwill the name still carried years after closing.
Served in a frozen pineapple. The signature presentation and the drink regulars remember most.
The namesake, the drink that gave the bar its name and eventually its legal trouble.
Classic tiki cocktails served the right way, in the right vessel, with serious rum.
The team knew rum cold. Following their lead rarely went wrong.
Painkiller was for rum drinkers, tiki obsessives, and late-night Lower East Side regulars who wanted craft, not kitsch. It is part of the city's cocktail history now.
For open rooms with the same craft attitude, see the cocktail bars below.
Painkiller sat at 49 Essex Street, a block from the Delancey St / Essex St station served by the F, J, M and Z lines. That put it in the dense heart of the Lower East Side bar district.
The turquoise spray-painted door was the landmark to look for. The surrounding blocks remain some of the busiest nightlife streets in Manhattan, even with Painkiller long gone.
During its run, Painkiller ran late and packed out on weekends, so an earlier weeknight arrival was the way to actually get a seat and talk to the bartenders about rum.
The bar closed in 2013. For an open Lower East Side cocktail room with the same craft seriousness, see the siblings below.
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